Ex-minister Suella Braverman has been pranked by a Channel 4 comedy programme into accepting its D**k of the Year award in person.
The former home secretary was duped by a pair of YouTube jokers, Josh and Archie, who were employed by The Last Leg to pose as constituents with a fictitious company.
Ms Braverman, who has taken a hardline position on stopping small boat migrants crossing the Channel, attended what she thought was a naming ceremony for a vessel on the River Wallington in Fareham last week.
But when she unveiled the plaque it instead named her as the winner of the award, which was put to a vote of the programme’s followers of X, formerly Twitter.
The segment mocking the former senior minister is due to air at 10pm tonight, Channel 4 confirmed. It declined to comment further.
An ally of Ms Braverman said: ‘It could have been a bit funnier.’
The former home secretary was duped by a pair of YouTube jokers, Josh and Archie, who were employed by The Last Leg to pose as constituents and set her up for the puerile joke.
The Last Leg is one of the channel’s most popular shows. It is hosted by Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker and first ran alongside the channel’s coverage of the 2012 Paralympics.
It has run the D**k of the Week competition for a decade.
The segment mocking the former senior minister is due to air at 10pm tonight, Channel 4 confirmed. It declined to comment further.
Josh & Archie have more than 1.5million followers on their YouTube channel. They have previously carried out pranks against targets including Just Stop Oil, whom they surrounded with a counter protest by people wearing t-shirts saying ‘just stop pi**ing people off’.
In a statement the Youtubers said: ‘We knew Suella liked boats, and photocalls, so we hope she will forgive us for setting up this ruse which was really all about celebrating her and her award.’
The Last Leg is one of the channel’s most popular shows. It is hosted by Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker and first ran alongside the channel’s coverage of the 2012 Paralympics.
Australian Hills was born with one foot and Brooker had a leg amputated as a baby, leading them to describe the show as ‘three guys with four legs talking about the week’.
It has run the D**k of the Week competition for a decade. The inaugural title went to Vladimir Putin and the winner has always been a right-wing politician or commentator, and usually a senior Tory minister. Viewers also named David Cameron D**k of the Decade.
The channel’s comedy programmes have previous form for sending up Tory politicians. In 2018 two, including former leader Iain Duncan Smith – were duped into discussing a fake cocaine-selling app.
Ross Thompson, Conservative MP for Aberdeen South, was also tricked by TV show Ministry Of Justice into talking about ‘InstantGrammes’, which he was told supports Colombian children.
The fictional smartphone app was said to sell drugs with a proportion of the profits being used to support youngsters in a cartel’s ‘cocaine factory’.
While Ross Thompson worried that the app ‘makes drugs look cool’, Sir Iain attempted to reassure viewers that GCHQ would deal with the threat.
The hilarious footage was reminiscent of the 1997 sketch on the Channel’s Brass Eye satire show in which the late Tory MP David Amess was duped into referring to fictional drug Cake as ‘a big yellow death bullet’.